Should Parents Kiss Their Kids On The Lips?

This picture of Victoria kissing her daughter Harper has sparked a parenting debate [Photo: Instagram/victoriabeckham]

It’s astonishing what the Internet gets it’s knickers in a twist about these days. ICYMI it was little Harper Beckham’s 5th birthday earlier this week. And her mum, Victoria, marked the occasion by taking to Instagram and uploading a sweet picture of her giving the birthday girl a kiss with the caption: “Happy Birthday baby girl. We all love you so much X Kisses from mummy X”. So far, so normal.

Except the picture seems to have ignited some sort of heated online debate about whether parents should kiss their children on the lips.

Though the picture received 568K likes with many labelling the snap as adorable, others claimed the image was ‘inappropriate’, ‘disgusting’ and ‘horrible’. Some went so far as to call the fashion designer and her daughter ‘lesbians.’ We kid you not!

“Eww sorry I’m old fashioned it looks like they making out”, one person wrote.

“It is strange to kiss your parents on the lips. Stop saying to other people it isn’t if they think it is because guess what they aren’t the only one,” another commented.

While others pointed out that kissing children on the lips could be detrimental to the child’s health.

"A lot of kids get cold sores from their parents kissing them on the mouth,” one wrote.

Thankfully, there were plenty of people who stepped forward to defend VB’s show of motherly affection.

“Everybody who thinks this is sexual or wrong - I think YOU are the ones with a huge problem! This is so normal, and just shows love between a mother and her daughter,” one commented.

“Anyone who has/had a problem with this picture is only a small example of one of the many things wrong with this world today,” added another

Other parents decided to go one stage further in their defence of Victoria by taking to social media to share snaps of themselves kissing their own children on the lips.

David also posted a snap of the birthday girl [Photo: Instagram/davidbeckham]

So far, Victoria hasn’t responded to the backlash, but it will be interesting to see if she hits back as strongly as her husband, David did last year. After he was slammed in a newspaper article for allowing a then 4-year-old Harper to use a dummy, he took to Instagram to call out the parenting shamers.

“Why do people feel they have the right to criticise a parent about their own children without having any facts??,” he wrote.

"Everybody who has children knows that when they aren’t feeling well or have a fever you do what comforts them best and most of the time it’s a pacifier so those who criticise think twice about what you say about other people’s children because actually you have no right to criticise me as a parent.”

Parenting shamers - nil Beckhams - one. Let’s see if Victoria can make it two nil eh?

Do you think parents should kiss their children on the lips? Let us know @YahooStyleUK